Railway Minister launches mobile app to improve ticketing facility
Mumbai : You may no longer have to spend time in big queues at booking windows, as you can now book your tickets using your mobile phones and take print out from Automatic Ticket Vending Machine (ATVM) at the station. This facility is for suburban as well as outstation tickets.
While launching the facility on Saturday, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu also said that the State and Central government will soon have a meeting to resolve long pending issues between them that will ease the travel of 7 million suburban commuters and also provide them extended facilities. Prabhu, who was in Mumbai, said, “A meeting will be held with Nitin Gadkari who holds the Union Ministry for Road Transport along with the state’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to discuss problems on the suburban system such as improvement of the harbour line.”
The CR had recently prepared a plan for the extension of harbour line up till Ballard Estate that will enable them to increase carrying capacity on the route by nearly 200 per cent and introduce new services. The project requires land from Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) for which a correspondence is ongoing with the MbPT authorities.
When asked about the proposed extension of the harbour line to increase services, Prabhu said, “There are quite a few proposals like these and the number of commuters on suburban system is quite high so we are looking at ways to make travel more comfortable for commuters.”
Following the launch of the mobile ticketing facility, Prabhu stressed on taking a step forward under which the commuter will not have to wait to get the ticket printed on ATVM and can simply travel with the image of the e-ticket in the mobile phones.
The first ticket after the inauguration of the mobile ticketing services was booked by Prabhu himself from Dadar to Khar, where he has a bungalow. Following the inauguration Prabhu said, “There are 20 crore commuters across India and 90 crore mobile users and this service will improve the ticketing facility.” Even before the mobile ticketing facility was launched, 500 applications were downloaded from google play.
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What is mobile ticketing?
Mobile ticketing is an application made by the Indian Railways (IR) along with its IT arm CRIS using which any person with an internet connection can book suburban and long distance railway tickets from their mobile phones. An R-wallet will have to be created for the same and can be recharged in multiples of Rs. 100. After booking tickets, commuters will have to get the same printed from an ATVM placed on five major stations on central railway such as Kalyan, Thane, Kurla, Dadar and CST and five other stations on western line including Churchgate, Dadar, Bandra, Andheri and Borivali.
After booking the ticket on mobile phone, the commuter will be given a one time password, which they will have to key in the ATVM along with their mobile number to get the printout.
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